Economist warns of urgent US ‘debt detox’: We’re going to be in a recession before people know it

A market expert is sounding the alarm on the country’s growing debt crisis, suggesting a “debt detox” in order to see the “the next great boom.”

“We’re going to have to finally have a short-term debt detox before we can get going on the next great boom,” Financial author and HS Dent founder Harry Dent explained during his appearance on “Cavuto: Coast to Coast” on Tuesday.

“Here’s the number, Neil,” Dent said to host Neil Cavuto. “Nobody’s totaling this up: Twenty-seven trillion [dollars] in debt and deficits from the government and money printing combined since the 2008 downturn to get us through that long ditch and spending.”

“And now the millennials are ready to spend money 2024 to ’37, as I also predicted a long time,” he continued.

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The economist argued that the U.S. has a “massive financial asset bubble that hasn’t deleveraged super-high debt levels,” which could lead to greater problems.

Dent blamed the overreaction to overstimulating over COVID as one of the many reasons for today’s current debt level — an effort, he said, “didn’t make sense.”

The national debt — which measures what the U.S. owes its creditors — increased to $34,608,412,560,642.47 as of Monday afternoon, according to the latest numbers published by the Treasury Department. That is up about $1.7 billion from the $34,600,643,492,585.10 figure reported the previous day.

By comparison, just four decades ago, the national debt hovered around $907 billion.

As a result, Dent predicts that the Fed will have to “hammer down,” and that Americans can expect to “feel this on a year-and-a-half lag into early to mid-next year.”

When asked why the debt may be at its breaking point, Dent said that it’s due to the Fed’s 525 basis points — numbers that the forecaster said caused the “deepest recession” in 1980 and tightening.

Fed policymakers hiked rates to their highest level in two decades, with the benchmark federal funds rate currently sitting at a range of 5.25% to 5.5%.

Those rate hikes followed inflation reaching a 40-year high of 9.1% year-over-year in June 2022, which declined to 3.2% as of February 2024 — an amount that remains elevated above the Fed’s 2% target rate. 

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“When you overstimulate and flood so much money in, people over-invest, overspend, over-borrow. So, they’re borrowing from the future already. Then, when you turn around and have to clamp down because you created 9.1% inflation overnight in a zero-inflation economy, by the way, and that’s another thing my indicators have been predicting for a long time,” Dent stressed. 

“Then you get this mess like, oh, my gosh, now you’re going to force all this debt in excesses to suddenly deleverage,” he added.

Dent explained that the economy “always overdoes stuff” and then “deleverages,” detoxing the debt into bad investments. 

The economy has “not been allowed” to detox, according to Dent. 

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“I think we’re going to be forced with this. I’m just telling investors… Wait until this stimulus fully hits. We won’t know until early to mid-next year when it hits fully. I think we’re going to be in a recession before people know it,” he stressed.

The market forecaster told Cavuto that what we’re witnessing is a “classic example” of the government interfering with an economy that they don’t understand and trying to make it better.

“They make it worse in the end,” he asserted.

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FOX Business’ Megan Henney and Eric Revell contributed to this report.